


The Person That You Are Becoming

by likehandlingroses



Series: Awfully Sweet [5]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Developing Friendship, Fluff, Gen, Healing, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23068594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: First chances are easily missed if we aren't guided to them. Thomas knows this, and he speaks to the children upstairs accordingly.People well past the days of first--or second--chances notice, giving Thomas a few new chances of his own.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & Andy Parker, Thomas Barrow & George Crawley, Thomas Barrow & John Bates, Thomas Barrow & Phyllis Baxter, Thomas Barrow & Richard Ellis, Thomas Barrow & Sybbie Branson
Series: Awfully Sweet [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569157
Comments: 32
Kudos: 278





	The Person That You Are Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Some mild content things-vague references to child abuse and to Thomas's suicide attempt. 
> 
> Title is a reference to line in a Mister Rogers scene/song.

It wouldn’t be difficult to catch Thomas alone; he usually was. And—as Mr. Molesley was upstairs in the drawing room—so was Phyllis.

She’d made a promising start at Downton, but for whatever reason, most of the initial friendliness hadn’t caught fire. Thomas was blaming himself; it was why he’d gotten her invited to Mr. Mason’s farm, why he’d lingered after luncheon when everything had been cleared and she’d started to sew, but the Bateses had remained glowering at the end of the table. 

It wasn’t all his fault—she’d never been a natural at making friends, never fit easily anywhere. She was suggestible, weak-willed...incapable in many respects (though she hoped not as many as before). And though he didn’t know it, she’d been nasty, too—as nasty as he could imagine. It lingered inside of her, unspoken and unwanted, but irritating, like a bunched-up stocking in her shoe that she could never set straight.

She had no right to judge Thomas, and any fleeting desire to was gone now that she knew he was sorry for what he’d done, that he was taking care to mend it as best he could. Now that she knew Mr. Barrow—the first Mr. Barrow, the Mr. Barrow who had loved her when her own father wouldn’t—had saddled Thomas with contempt and coldness and a guilt no child should feel. 

The first Mr. Barrow had seemed very tall to her, even once she’d grown and realized he wasn’t tall, particularly. It was the way he stood, the way he carried himself so carefully—so unlike her own father, who slouched and slurred his way through life. He was clean—neat and tidy—and his teeth grew in two straight, white rows that Phyllis had marveled at. He’d taken her when he’d gone shooting, he’d let her hold his tools—those tiny, well-ordered tools on his work bench—and he’d told her she was lovely.

Lovely, that’s what he’d called her—and no one else had called her that before. Not like that, for there was nothing leering in it, nothing untoward…it felt like how a father should speak to his child, she thought. He should think of his children as lovely and fine…

She knew enough, now, to guess that he’d never called Thomas anything of the sort. Perhaps that was why he’d helped get her the job— _Phyllis Baxter, that’s the girl my father thought was lovely and fine, even though she wasn’t any cleverer than I was, any handsomer, any stronger, any better…_

(The first Mr. Barrow had written her at Christmas and her birthday every year she was in prison. She remembered Margaret saying they hadn’t heard from Thomas since he left for Downton—but how could that be, with a war in between, a war he’d been wounded in?)

 _People will like her,_ he must’ve thought. _People will like her too much to remember how much they despise me._

Just like when they were children. 

And if she thought of that long enough, she moved from knowing she forgave him to wishing he would forgive her (though of course what happened when they were children wasn’t either of their faults, and he would say so. He would say so, now that he was determined not to hurt her…and knowing he would say so was enough to stop her from trying to apologize).

They’d be good friends—she was determined they would be, now. To spite the versions of themselves who would never believe it, to spite the first Mr. Barrow, to spite the very notion that good couldn’t come from bad. 

To her surprise, Thomas wasn’t alone in the servants’ hall. He was chatting conspiratorially over a cup of tea with Miss Sybbie and Master George, who sat on either side of him, doing away with a plate of biscuits. 

She’d known, vaguely, that Thomas was fonder of the children’s company than anyone else’s. Always phrased like that, too, as if it were an insult to the rest of them...but insult or not, Thomas had kept it quiet downstairs. As if it embarrassed him, somehow. 

She was glad he seemed to have gotten over it. 

“—but you’ll have to say the letters for me, alright, Mr. Barrow?” she heard Sybbie explaining as she approached. “Is that alright?” 

She held a red crayon in her right hand, leaning determinedly in her seat over a piece of paper. 

“Of course,” Thomas said. He met Phyllis’s eyes briefly as she sat across from them, stitch work in hand, and she realized he hadn’t really gotten over being embarrassed.

But he was trying, anyway...Phyllis just hoped her sitting there would help things along rather than hinder them. 

“Does she have this in her name?” Sybbie held up her index fingers in an ‘x’ formation, giggling as she did so. 

“Now, Miss Sybbie, does it sound like Marigold has an ‘x’ in it?”

She laughed, sticking her tongue through her teeth.

“I was teasing you…” Which made Thomas laugh.

He got all the way through spelling Marigold’s name before Mr. Molesley poked his head in and asked for his help in the drawing room. Thomas blinked before he stood, looking to his left and right and then at Phyllis.

She took the hint:

“I can watch them.”

“Nanny Foster’ll be back at half past,” Thomas assured her as he stood. “She’s gone into Ripon. With three upstairs, now, I thought I’d give Nanny Watson a break. But if you’d rather take them up now, I’m sure—”

“—I don’t mind it.”

He smiled—just a little—at that, which steeled Phyllis’s nerves for the task she’d volunteered herself for. 

She didn’t know the first thing about children. Mrs. Benton’s daughters were all grown, and even if they hadn’t been…

One of the grandsons had spoken with a stutter; she remembered that. And Peter had laughed with her about it in a way that had seemed all in fun at the time, but now felt so recklessly, relentlessly cruel.

“Do you want one, Miss Baxter?” Sybbie held out her crayon box as far as she could across the table (which wasn’t very far). 

“Oh, I don’t want to take your…” she began—egged on by guilt—but the eagerness in Sybbie’s eyes overtook it, and she changed course. “Well, which one, do you think?”

Sybbie reached into the box and pulled out a yellow crayon, which Phyllis said was “perfect, thank you.” This earned her a grin so wide she couldn’t help but smile herself. 

“We’re coloring a picture for Marigold,” Sybbie said—she’d decided to color in the circles in her letters, filling the red loops in with blue. 

“That’s a nice idea, Miss Sybbie.”

“She's our friend,” George explained. He’d moved into Thomas’s chair and was scribbling away in green on the corner of the paper. 

“She’s not our friend _yet,_ ” Sybbie corrected kindly. “But if we give her a present, she’ll know we like her. And then she’ll know she can play with us, and then we’ll be friends. That’s what Mr. Barrow said.” 

Just like that, Phyllis knew she’d won. He’d won— _they’d_ won over the bad times— they _would_ win, anyway. He wanted them to...what’s more, he knew how. 

“Mr. Barrow said all that?”

Sybbie nodded, looking disinterested—clearly, Mr. Barrow’s musings on friendship seemed a matter of course to her. 

“Can you make a star?” she asked, pushing the paper towards Phyllis. 

“I can. Right here?” Sybbie nodded, watching her intently as Phyllis drew a tiny yellow star in the corner of the paper. 

“That’s a good one!” Sybbie exclaimed when she’d finished and passed the paper back across the table. “George, look what she did!” 

George agreed that it was a good star—touching it briefly with his finger—before going back to his scribbles. Sybbie, however, beamed at Phyllis. 

“That’s a good job!” she said, so proudly that Phyllis felt strangely like she might cry.

She wondered if Mr. Barrow—the second Mr. Barrow—had taught them _that,_ too. 

* * *

It was a shame men couldn’t be nannies—that would have solved everyone’s problems. Nanny Watson had left to get married, and Mr. Barrow wanted to stay on and already doted on the children. Andy’d never seen anything like it—his own dad hadn’t been so soft with him as Mr. Barrow was to the upstairs children…though Miss Sybbie was already cleverer than Andy, so perhaps that played some part in it…what parent wanted to spend time with a child who was simple?

Miss Sybbie had come back from America with books—books for children, books that were mostly pictures, but books she could read and understand—and everyone cooed over it in the drawing room at tea. She was so young, they kept saying—so young but so bright, so terrifically bright…Mrs. Crawley had made some comment about women being in Parliament by the time Sybbie was grown (His Lordship went cross-eyed for a full minute at that one).

Andy wasn’t even clever enough to raise pigs…wasn’t that what the Prodigal Son had done? Something like it, anyway…Andy only remembered the cobs and the trough…he’d tried eating one at dinner, once, and his father had slapped it out of his hands with an embarrassment that had made Andy feel like he’d slapped him across the face.

He’d only wondered...it wasn’t as if he’d made it up—it was in the Bible, wasn’t it?

Perhaps Miss Sybbie would know, he thought glumly, holding her hand as she trotted back to the day nursery. Master George held one of Nanny Foster’s hands and Miss Marigold held the other, though they both let go and rushed to Mr. Barrow’s side when they saw him at the other end of the hall. Nanny Foster hurried after them (“you mustn’t disturb Mr. Barrow like that!”), but Sybbie remained at Andy’s side.

“I want to stay here,” she said, though she was standing on her toes and watching the scene expectantly. Mr. Barrow scooped Marigold up in his arms as he spoke with Nanny Foster, George hovering beside him, waiting for his turn.

In the end, Nanny Foster went downstairs, leaving Mr. Barrow with the children. Andy supposed Mr. Barrow had offered to take over while she took something for the headache she’d been complaining about—Nanny Foster was always complaining of something. Andy wondered if anything was actually ever wrong, or if she just imagined it all.

Then again, imagining things wasn’t exactly going to land someone a clean bill of health…

“—but no surprise there.” Mr. Barrow finished a sentence Andy hadn’t heard the start of. He nodded silently as a cover, and a flush came over Mr. Barrow’s cheeks. He looked at the ground, then up at the ceiling, then asked Marigold what she’d like to play, in a voice that wasn’t quite his own.

Andy’s heart sunk. He hadn’t meant to…but of course, it was his own fault, because up until a day ago he _had_ meant to. It was all he’d meant in his treatment of Mr. Barrow, and he hadn’t meant it to be unkind, but he saw now that it was. Ever since Anna and Mr. Bates had pointed it out, Andy had begun to wonder why he’d thought Mr. Barrow would be so keen on him at all…

As if Mr. Barrow had nowhere better to look than a stupid, gullible, awkward footman who would never be anything more than a footman because he didn’t bloody _know_ anything at all…Andy supposed men like Mr. Barrow weren’t any different than anyone else in that respect—they needed a _reason_ to go after someone, surely.

Why on earth would it be him?

“Play Felix with us!” Sybbie said, taking her deck of Felix the Cat playing cards from the day nursery table.

“I don’t think Miss Marigold will know how to play that,” Mr. Barrow said, setting Marigold down and consenting to George’s outstretched arms.

“But I do, and so does George!” Sybbie said, opening the box and sitting on the floor. “And you do and Andy, so she’ll have to be too little.”

“But Miss Marigold’s our friend too, isn’t she?” Mr. Barrow retorted. "I’m older than you, and I know all sorts of games you can’t play. But we don’t play those games when we’re together, do we?”

Sybbie pondered this before shrugging.

“She can play the next one.”

“Suppose she doesn’t want to, because you’ve hurt her feelings, leaving her out of this one?” Marigold drew to Mr. Barrow's side, looking up expectantly as he advocated on her behalf. “I’ll bet she’d like the Noah’s Ark.”

Sybbie sat back on her hands with a huff. “But I’m too big to play Noah’s Ark!”

“I’m not,” Mr. Barrow said.

This made a difference--Sybbie stared up at him in awe. 

“You’re not?”

“No,” Mr. Barrow proclaimed. “And I’m going to take all the best animals if you don’t stop—”

Sybbie shot up, hurrying to the corner she kept the Noah’s Ark.

“—I want the lions!” She heaved it over, excited now Mr. Barrow had given her permission to be.

Andy felt worse than ever, and it didn’t help that Sybbie chose that moment to draw attention to him.

“Then Andy can be the—”

“—I should get downstairs,” he murmured.

“No, be the leopards, please, Andy!!” Sybbie cried out, hurrying to his side. “Please?”

“Please, Andy?” George joined in.

Mr. Barrow wasn’t looking at him. For a brief, horrible second, Andy thought he might tell the children to stop their asking, but he seemed at a loss to even manage that. 

But if Andy were to stay…

“Suppose I’d rather be the elephants?” he said.

Sybbie shook her head as she opened the ark door. “Mr. Barrow always gets the elephants.”

Mr. Barrow chanced a glance at Andy, who kept up his smile as best he could. He nodded his head, conceding the elephants, but Mr. Barrow handed the pair of them over.

“Just this once,” he said, looking as pleased as Andy had ever seen him. And it wasn’t for the reasons Mrs. Patmore and Mr. Carson had made him think he’d be pleased.

He wanted a friend, and God knew Andy needed one…

“That’s nice of you!” Sybbie said, tapping Mr. Barrow’s arm encouragingly. “And I’ll share...my monkeys.”

She passed Marigold the pair of monkeys, and Marigold picked them up by their tails. She held them up to Mr. Barrow who tapped one so it swung in her hand, and she giggled.

“George!” Sybbie said. “Share something.”

George complied, handing over the tigers to Mr. Barrow, standing on his toes to set them upright in the palm of his hand. 

“Here, Mr. Barrow…” he said, grinning shyly as Mr. Barrow thanked him.

“He’s given you the best animal,” Andy said, noting how Mr. Barrow still looked at him with no small amount of fear.

“No,” he replied, setting his tigers down. “Master George likes the giraffes, don’t you?”

No one asked Andy to share any animals—he was a guest to the game. Still, he felt more generous after it, somehow.

And when Mr. Barrow came into his room that night and offered to help, Andy knew they’d both be better off if he accepted.

* * *

John moved to the side of the hallway to make room for two maids hurrying down the hall with towels that smelled powerfully of sugar and flowers. Anna came down the hall behind them, grinning as she approached—she had a basin in her own hand, filled with shards of blue glass.

“What’s the commotion?” he asked, as she slowed and pulled to the side to join him.

“Master George was in Lady Mary’s room, poking around where he shouldn’t,” she said. “He’s broken a perfume bottle—I think he must’ve thrown it.”

She shook her head, though she was still smiling. John wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was—would their little one do the same, when they were old enough to go poking around where they shouldn’t?

“That doesn’t sound like him,” John said. Master George had always seemed rather gentle, taking more from his father than his mother in that respect.

“Everyone throws something, from time to time, just to see what happens...” Anna said teasingly. “Anyway, he’d hid himself under the bed...Mr. Barrow’s got him out, now. They’re having a chat about it…”

She laughed to herself, not noticing at first how John had slowed in the hall. She turned back on her heel, brow knit.

“Aren’t you coming down?”

“In a minute. I’ve forgotten one of His Lordship’s shirts…”

But he didn’t go back to the dressing room, instead stopping next to the open door of Lady Mary’s bedroom.

For some weeks now, he’d been mulling over the Thomas Situation. By rights, he should only ever have known that Thomas had been laid up with the flu for a week, and he was now taking some time to fully recover before finding a new job.

But Lord Grantham had spoken without thinking, and John had known from the first evening what really happened.

Thomas had guessed as much—John could see it in his face. The anticipation, the embarrassment…the anger that John couldn’t blame him for. Still, he said nothing, hoping Thomas might assume he’d been wrong…or in any case, decide John wasn’t planning on making trouble.

Still, watching Thomas draw away from him even as most everyone else seemed to pull him closer—even Mr. Carson had made some passable efforts at engaging him over dinner—made John feel, somehow, that he was making the wrong choice in ignoring the matter.

Never did he feel it more than when he saw Thomas with one of the children—who all looked at him as if he would take down the moon for them (and perhaps he really could, if they asked). Once or twice, John had felt a strange thought run through his head: if he and Anna had only started at Downton today—if he had arrived at Downton as a man anxious to be a good father to his first child—he’d have looked no further than Thomas Barrow as an example.

He stopped on the right side of the door, feeling as if he were standing, finally, at the edge of a precipice. Whatever he heard would decide him on the matter of how he’d like to part ways with Thomas.

“—and Mrs. Hughes, and everyone’s done wrong sometimes,” he heard Thomas say, in that soft, easy voice he saved for the children.

“But Nanny will be angry, and I’ll be in trouble…”

“And so you should be, if you’ve done something wrong,” he said, voice light and bright. John supposed they may have even made George smile in spite of himself. “But you’ll do better the next time.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“No, I don’t think you will...tell Nanny that, and see what she says.”

“But she’s going to be angry, Mr. Barrow,” George repeated, and it was clear he had more than punishment on his mind. Thomas considered the statement in a beat of silence that John held his breath during—he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Thomas had to say about guilt.

“She might be, for a time,” Thomas replied, voice even gentler than usual. “You can’t stop her from feeling that. But I think she’ll forgive you, if you say you’re sorry. You _are_ sorry, aren’t you?”

George must have nodded, for Thomas said: “Well then, perhaps you can tell her when you have your tea.”

“I don’t want to have tea today,” George said hurriedly, and this time Thomas didn’t pause before answering.  
  


“Because your stomach hurts?” Another nod, perhaps. “That’s what mine does when I’ve done something wrong. But if you face up to it, it’ll pass. I promise.”

Now it was George’s turn to ponder, and John had to lean closer to hear him when he finally spoke:

“Will you go with me, Mr. Barrow?”

John didn’t need to stay to hear his answer, but he did anyway, knowing before he heard it what he’d have to do before the day was out.

“Course I will, Master George. I’d be happy to.”

And if he’d had any doubt, that would have settled the matter.

John Bates had been a more effective lurker when he was young—and it had nothing to do with the cane, really. Oh, that didn’t help with the optics of things—he’d never blend in as well as he might’ve otherwise, and of course on certain floors it made a racket. But if he’d been twenty-five, he could have managed both difficulties with ease.

It was age that had done him in…young men could go where they pleased, stay as long as they liked, keep company or not, and it rarely drew attention. But something happened when a man hit a certain age—for him it had been thirty-five, but John supposed happier men could get away with things for longer: they became easy objects of scrutiny. Young men were full of youthful possibility and allowed plenty of leeway; older men were full of dangerous experience and must expect a certain amount of suspicion.

Anna thought it was the opposite for women—young women couldn’t go anywhere, couldn’t keep company with anyone, before they were settled. But once they were older, people stopped believing a woman could get into any trouble at all.

Funny—and probably true—but most inconvenient, particularly where Thomas was concerned. For if anyone’s instincts were more suspicious of _men-of-a-certain-age_ than Thomas Barrow, John hadn’t met them yet. He seemed to realize early as afternoon tea that John intended to corner him, and he’d done his best to avoid it.

But when Miss Baxter left Thomas alone in the boot room (“oh, there you are, Mr. Bates! His Lordship’s hunting boots came back from London—I think he’ll be pleased. They did a clean job of it--it’s remarkable what someone can do with a little bit of a skill”), John took his chance.  
  
Thomas conveyed the same information as Miss Baxter had in a far less effusive manner, pointing dispassionately to the far countertop.

“Anna left those for you. Took them long enough.”

He hardly looked up from his work, and merely shrugged when John thanked him. It wasn’t unkind—or at least, John didn’t think he meant it to be. He was afraid—his movements slowed as it became clear John wasn’t going to take the boots and go.

But John was decided—they have to go _through_ it, they’d tried it every other way…and if either of them were worse off than before when he’d finished, John would take responsibility.

“I haven’t known what to say, or whether to say anything at all,” he began, and Thomas stopped moving entirely. “I kept weighing it in my mind—do I honor what you wish to be true, which is that I know nothing…or do I honor what _is_ true, and what you already must suspect, which is that I know everything?”

Thomas winced. John suspected he’d not gotten off to the right start—he’d never had a comforting bedside manner, and things didn’t improve when people were sitting up straight.

“I don’t need you to tell me—”

“—Mr. Barrow—”

“—how you’re sorry for me,” he said in a low voice, a familiar voice. Sharp and jagged—one of unqualified resentment. “Because you _have_ to be sorry. I understand. You’re determined to be decent about it, keep up appearances. _The Great Mr. Bates._ Walks on water, heals the sick…figures you’d get around to the likes of me, eventually.”

He gestured vaguely with a hand that was shaking. He was being nasty—nastier than John had heard Thomas be in a long while, since Gwen had come to house, maybe…but he was tired, too. Resigned.

Thomas thought it was all a game, a farce of a game only John Bates was permitted to win. There could be no heroes without villains, no great men without small ones…It was clear what part Thomas believed he was being asked to play, and he was obliging—if unenthusiastic.

How wretched for them both.

“Do you think so, Mr. Barrow?” John said, sitting down across from him. Thomas closed his eyes briefly, poorly containing a sigh. “Because when you speak about me in the way you just have, I feel entirely inadequate.”

“I have a habit of doing that, don’t take it personal.” Miserable—he was miserable in John’s company.

It had to be now.

“But I _do_ take it personally,” he said. “I take it very personally. Because everyone else in this house, it seems, can speak to you with more ease than I can muster. With more understanding, with more compassion. When I am the last person who should judge you and should be the first to reach out in understanding, I am instead the last person you seek the confidence of and the first to speak in judgment.”

Thomas swallowed—he was staring at a divot in the wood on the table, face growing paler by the second. John paused for a moment, though he hardly expected Thomas to have anything to say to that.

“I know this, therefore I feel inadequate,” John continued, “hearing you talk of me as someone who poses as a decent man...when I cannot seem to manage the simplest, most necessary thing required for decency. If I were decent, you could look me in the eye—since you cannot, I am found wanting.”

Thomas opened and closed his mouth twice before anything came of it.

“Yeah, well…” He ducked his head still further, staring at his lap and looking younger than John remembered him being (and he didn’t like to think how young Thomas had been when they’d first met, though he’d have to think of it…he’d have to think of it and forgive himself for his failure to think of it back then).

“We have kept up a quarrel, you and I. It started during a time when you wanted to quarrel with everyone—it was easy for me to encourage, easy to feel no guilt over. But now I look around, and it’s only me who seems to have a quarrel, and I have it with a man who teaches footmen to read and children to forgive themselves for their failings.”

The tacit admission that he’d been eavesdropping brought Thomas’s wide eyes to meet his own, though they dropped almost immediately. A flush was coming into his cheeks.

“Can’t say I didn’t ask for it, at least at the start,” he muttered.

“We ask for all kinds of damaging things, when we’re young. It’s the job of people who know better not to give them to us.” John knew that, now. Now that the people at Downton had shown him kindness and forgiveness and grace…made him feel properly a man again. For a long time, he’d forgotten what that felt like, what responsibility it gave him.

He remembered it now.

“How could it have helped anything, going on as we did?” he continued. “What has it helped now?”

“If I wanted help, I should have asked,” Thomas said, as if reciting a particularly dull bit of verse. “Mr. Carson said he would have helped me, if he’d known I needed it so much. But I didn’t ask. Suppose I was always too proud.”

In spite of himself, John felt a certain ire itching in his chest. Mr. Carson was a good man, on the whole, but John had known from his first day at Downton that his blinders were heavy—and often willfully unacknowledged.

He could almost hear Mr. Carson saying it-- _if we'd known you needed it so much..._ what a wretched thing to say to him now, whether it was true or not...but it had worked on Thomas, somehow. For now, it had worked, absolving Mr. Carson of any blame while assuring Thomas of his own guilt (an assurance John felt confident he didn’t need).

John knew the comment had left him an opening in Thomas’s good graces, with room enough for John to slip into as well. If only Thomas hadn’t been so proud, if only he’d shown everyone who he was, if only John had _known…_

 _But it wouldn’t be right,_ the pit of his stomach told him. _It would be a lie, and it wouldn’t be right._

He closed his eyes before speaking, feeling himself racing to the place of no return.

“Then Mr. Carson is pleading ignorance, and I pray he is being truthful, but I have no such excuse.”

Thomas stared at him, now, mouth slightly open, grabbing at every word with a curiosity John hoped would prove helpful by the end of things.

“For I have noticed what's been troubling you, I’ve admired the strengthening of your virtues...I even encouraged Andy to keep in with you because I knew it was doing you both good. But to you, I still said nothing unless it was to find fault. As if you were a child I’d been bidden to scold…”

He nearly said, _as if I were a child myself,_ but that wasn’t right, was it? Master George didn’t speak to Thomas that way…none of the children did. No one had told them they shouldn’t be fond of him, no one had warned them off or whispered about Thomas to them…they’d been trusted to make up their own minds, and so they had.

“So if you look at me and see a person who is sorry for you only because I am bound by some baseline of human _decency_ , some sense of my own importance, then I have been not only unkind, but dishonest,” John said, grateful he’d at last come to the end of it. He took a breath:

“And I am sorry, Mr. Barrow. Thomas. I am ashamed and I am sorry.”

He counted six long, shuddering breaths before Thomas spoke—he was determined not to break, and John couldn’t blame him.

“Well, I’m grateful, if it’s true,” he finally managed, voice hardly above a whisper. “It’d be nice, not to leave any loose ends, when I go. Though I suppose you won’t be sorry when I do.”

John almost smiled—he was determined to fish it all out of him.

“Is it so impossible to you that I might be?”

Thomas shrugged. “Not impossible. Just unreasonable.”

“That shouldn’t surprise you; I can’t imagine you’ve thought me anything else.”

Thomas’s mouth twisted into a smile of its own, just as Anna turned a corner into the boot room.

“There you are...” she said with a smile. “Alright, Mr. Barrow?”

For though he was smiling, he looked undeniably shaken.

“Fine,” he said, picking the shoe he’d been working on up again with a flourish. “Just fine.”

Anna took more convincing, and she questioned John as headed back to the cottage.

“You weren’t pestering him, I hope?”

“No,” he said, trying not to be offended by the suggestion. “I think we’re finished with that.”

“And it’s about time, Mr. Bates…” 

* * *

Richard gave Mr. Carson this: he was proving a humorous sparring partner for Mr. Wilson. They’d gotten into such head-bobbing awkwardness over who was to sit at the head of the table that Richard thought they’d never get dinner served.

In the end, Mr. Carson won out—a fleeting triumph in a war he was predestined to lose. And Mr. Barrow was sat across from Richard, having taken himself out of the battle entirely.

Richard had no right to be glad of it, but he was. Mr. Barrow hadn’t tired of him, yet, and Richard didn’t think any lady during her first London season could be as flattered as he was every time Mr. Barrow turned to ask his opinion.

Anna—Mrs. Bates, properly, but no one from the house called her that, Richard noticed—left towards the end of the meal, returning in ten minutes’ time with a child in her arms. Johnnie, if Richard remembered right—and he thought he must, for it wasn’t every day a valet and lady's maid were _married,_ let alone keeping a child in the upstairs nursery.

Johnnie leaned away from his mother, pulling towards the ground, and she let him down without argument. He stopped at the head of the table first, disrupting Mr. Carson’s stoic stance as he gripped the arm of the chair. Mr. Carson jumped, at first, though he peered down fondly at the child when he realized the cause of the commotion.

“Well, hello!”

But the boy tripped back, frightened, from Mr. Carson—he’d raced for the chair because he’d expected someone else to be sitting there. Indeed, the whole table must have seemed out of sorts to the poor chap—full of unfamiliar faces in chairs that didn’t belong to them. He hurried over to his father, who ruffled his hair and gestured towards their end of the table.

“He’s over there…” Richard heard him murmur with a grin. Johnnie caught sight of Mr. Barrow—the real Mr. Barrow, sitting in entirely the wrong chair but still looking all in one piece—and hastened over. He reached for Mr. Barrow, who scooped him up with a laugh, as easy with him as he’d been with the upstairs children that afternoon. And if Mr. Bates now looked as pleased as Richard had seen him, Anna looked still more so as she settled to the right of Mr. Barrow.

That said something about a man.

“Mr. Barrow was hiding, wasn’t he?” Anna laughed, reaching over to fuss with collar of Johnnie’s coat.

Johnnie said something Richard couldn’t understand, but Mr. Barrow laughed and said, “yes, you did find me, didn’t you?”

Miss Lawton gave a world-weary sigh upon realizing the child was likely to stay through her coffee, which Anna noticed more than Mr. Barrow did. So that was bound to end poorly…Richard didn’t know why she made it so hard on herself. She was a lady's maid to a visitor, no one would begrudge her being there if she only _tried_ to be pleasant above two minutes at a time…

Johnnie had settled into the new seating arrangement quite comfortably. Mr. Barrow was a happy median point between his mother and Miss Baxter—who he seemed inordinately fond of—as well as being a worthwhile companion in his own right. Johnnie eyes kept drifting over to Richard—a new occupant, safely across the table, but close enough to be easily examined. He smiled when Richard did, and Richard foolishly wondered if Mr. Barrow had noticed, if he’d think better of him if he had.

Johnnie still spoke in an odd mix of intelligible words, unintelligible phrases, and babbles accompanied by broad gesturing. Listening to Mr. Barrow’s earnest replies, Richard picked up that Johnnie had played lots of games in the nursery that day, was not tired at all, and wanted one of the small cakes on the table.

Richard, who was nearest to the tray, waited for Anna to assent before handing it over (“but Mummy gets half of it, yes? Good boy”). He laughed quietly at how careful the boy was about it—like he was transporting precious cargo. He let his mother cut it in half with a knife, saying “again!” so she’d cut it into quarters.

Miss Baxter kindly refused her piece, and Johnnie didn’t hesitate to push the plate towards Richard, a grin on his face.

“For you!” he said. Richard took it with a hearty thanks—he could feel Miss Lawton steaming beside him, determined to be jealous of something she didn’t want.

But Richard—who didn’t see his nieces and nephews often enough, and would have no children of his own—was grateful indeed to see that neither of these things prevented the child in front of him from seeing him as a friend.

“He likes you,” Anna said to him.

Richard felt his heart thud unreasonably fast when Mr. Barrow looked between them with a grin, eyes eventually landing to rest on Richard.

“And why wouldn’t he?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The scene in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood I used for the title is between Lady Aberlin and Daniel Tiger, that I thought was very fitting! It's all about not knowing if you can fit in, if you were a mistake/can be liked despite your mistake...and having someone affirm that they like who you are, but also who you are turning out to be. I'm always moved when I watch the show by how Thomas talks to the children, and it felt similar to the Mister Rogers mentality, so I knew I wanted to give it a title in reference to that...and that one seemed exactly it!


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